Effects of Continuous Speech Therapy in Patients with Non-fluent Aphasia Using kMIT

kMIT를 이용한 비유창성 실어증 환자 음성 언어의 치료효과 연구

Melody intonation therepy (MIT) is to improve the linguistic aspects of the verbal utterance for aphasic patients utilizing the intact right brain. It is applied to the aphasic patients with good comprehension, poor fluency, and little available speech are thought to be ideal candidates. The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of Korean Melody intonation therapy (kMIT) in patients with non-fluent aphasia. Five male non-fluent aphasic patients were participated in this study. Average ages were 49.9 years old. Each therapy took 45-50minutes once a week for six months. Aphasic Screen lest (RISS) was used to assess language parameter such as Auditory comprehension, oral expression, reading, writing and calculation ability before and after kMIT. Mean of Length Utterance, verbal intelligibility and articulation disorder were assessed also. Computerized Speech Lab was used to assess the acoustic characteristics of aphasic patients before and after kMIT. The results are as follows : 1) Auditory comprehension, oral expression, reading, writing and calculation ability of the subjects increased after UH'. However, only oral expression showed significant difference (p<0.05). 2) Mean of Length Utterance of five patients generally increased after Un. 3) After kMIT, verbal intelligibility increased and showed significant difference (p<0.05). 4) Misarticulation rate generally decreased after m. 5) Voice Onset Time of the alveolar lenis /t/ and velar lenis /k/ gradually decreased after kMIT. 6) However, intonation pattern were increased gradually in yes'no question after kMIT.